Dr. Sunita Sah
speaker
332 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 6 Feb
Dr. Sunita Sah’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Yes, absolutely.
There's a large gap. There's a large gap between who we think we are and what we actually do.
Yeah, we do have what is called positive illusions that helps us live in the world at times, but also we have what is called an empathy gap. So if we see someone behaving badly, we think, oh, I would never do that in that particular circumstance. Oh, I would be able to have said no. I wouldn't have listened to my boss asking me to do something unethical. I would have said no.
And it's easy for us when we're not in the situation to say how we would react. But we actually don't know. Sometimes we enter that situation and we end up freezing or we're confused and we're unprepared because we don't have an action plan of defiance. We don't know how to defy because we've spent our whole lives complying and we don't have any training in defiance at all.
So we need an action plan long before the moment of crisis. So when we really need to, we can defy.
One of the things is that we can start anticipating because there's numerous times where we've complied and we wish we'd defied. And we know those times are going to happen again. So all we have to do is anticipate it. Some of these things are really predictable because we know what factors enable our defiance and what factors disable it.
And we can get explicit about them, write them down so we can anticipate what's difficult for us. Then we visualize it, we picture it, and we practice by scripting and role playing and repeating it. And the reason we have to do those things is because we have been so trained for compliance that those neural pathways are really strong. We need to now start practicing.
for defiance and building those neural pathways. And there's a wonderful quote that's often attributed to Bruce Lee, but it comes from a Greek poet that says, "...under duress, we don't rise to the level of our expectations." but we fall to the level of our training. And that is why it's so important to practice and train for defiance.
Because once we're in the situation, we can't just wish ourselves to speak up. We might predict that we would do that in advance, but we know there are times when we often comply and we need to practice for defiance.
Right. So I always say when we get to stage three of defiance, which is basically saying you're not comfortable or you're clarifying. And that doesn't, as you say, you definitely don't need to be a jerk. You can approach with curiosity rather than confrontation. Like, what do you mean by that? Help me understand that. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that. Oh, I have some concerns.
There's just short little things that you can say to put your concern on the table. And it's not even leaving that subservient position at that point. All you're doing is clarifying before you move to stage four and say, I'm not sure I can do that.
Thank you so much. It was wonderful to speak with you.
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